


Statistics

by imsfire



Series: Cassian week 2018 prompts [5]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Cassian's grief for K-2, Gen, Grief, Medical Details, Mourning, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, injury mentions (not too graphic), medbay scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 03:13:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15452118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Recovering in the med-bay after being rescued from Scarif, Jyn tries to be there for Cassian while he struggles to come to terms with his injuries, and with the loss of his dearest friend.





	Statistics

**Author's Note:**

> For day five of Cassian Appreciation Week on tumblr; Prompt, Favourite relationship.

“ _The statistics say_ …”  Cassian’s voice is tightly controlled, hiding pain, or bitterness maybe.  Or both.  “Call those statistics?!  Kay could have given me **exact figures.**   Thirty percent, forty percent? - I don’t trust these round numbers, they’re too neat.”

The med droid has just trundled out of the room, leaving the two of them to digest his message.  The statistics.

“Do they think I got up and kept moving just for _fun_?  Do they think I did it without _thinking_? -  that I couldn’t guess the odds?”

She wonders how many times over the years Kay must have warned him about the likelihood of serious injury, must have told him his chances, snapping out figures precise to the last decimal point. 

“I knew I was injured!” Cassian says. “I took a risk, I knew I took it.  Things – things have turned out against me.  But I knew what I was doing!  There were far more important things at stake than my fucking broken bones.”

The iron self-control slips and falls away as he goes on speaking and his voice is suddenly a fusion of grief and rage and self-disgust.  It’s agony to hear.

Thoracic spinal fracture, exacerbated by continued movement.  Flail chest injury from multiple broken ribs; punctured lung and ruptured spleen, all likewise made worse by getting up and carrying on moving.  The blaster burn has responded well to bacta treatment, as have the bruises, and the gash that scarred his face.  But bone-set shots and implants can only do so much in the face of the skeletal damage from his fall in the data tower and his insane determination to get up and carry on afterwards. 

He will be able to stand and move around, eventually, but there’s a forty percent probability he will never recover a full range of movement, and a thirty percent chance he’ll never walk unaided again.  The numbers are sobering.

Though as Cassian says, K2 would have been more precise.  _Thirty one point seven percent_ , Jyn thinks regretfully, _that’s what he would have said;_ _forty point nine three nine_ …

At least he feels able to talk about Kay.  She registers it vaguely as a good sign, remembering how speaking of what you had learned from the dead was one of the few forms of mourning Saw had approved. 

Would Kay have tried to stop Cassian?  From getting up off the gantry, from driving his shattered body on to crawl into the turbo-lift and struggle to his feet at the top, and stumble out to fire that one life-saving shot that changed their future?  From compressing his spinal cord and separating his shattered ribcage into opposing sections that tore into his internal organs with every breath?

But Kay would have known the risks; as the troopers piled in on him shooting without cease, he would have known the exact odds of his own survival too, and he fought on just the same.

She looks at Cassian; prone, weary, ashen apart from the dark, dark shadows in his eyes.  He’s got a grip on himself again and is lying silent after that tiny outburst of fury. 

He’s alive, no matter how battered.  He may never be able to run again but he’s _alive._

“Kay would have known the exact numbers, yes,” she agrees. 

She wants to go on, but – Kay was his best friend, possibly the one person he loved and trusted in the galaxy.  How will anything she could tell him make a difference?

There’s a momentary silence before Cassian says anything more.  “He just said _Goodbye_.  Just – goodbye, like it was nothing.  Like it was a thing he said to me every day.  He made it sound so - logical…”  His voice has turned strangely empty. “I suppose to him it was.”

He’s holding himself in calm now, barely a flicker of expression in his eyes.  It’s strange to see his spy face again.  She remembers how he stared, how he turned and almost ran to the door, cried out “Kay – _Kay_!” in despair.

“K2 knew the odds,” Jyn says.  “He still took the chance he saw.  He laid down his existence on the odds of that chance working out.”

She touches his hand softly, and he grasps hers and hold on to it.  “He was part of the team,” he says. “He did what would best help the mission, I know that.  Just like everyone else did.  But he just – the way he said it - it was like he’d just decided to step outside for a while.  Like him dying – the certainty of dying – like it was _nothing_.”

“We succeeded because of him, Cassian.  We won – we _lived_ – because of him closing that door and defending it, because he thought it was worth the risk.  I know you don’t like these statistics, today, this chance that your body is permanently kriffed-up.  But there’s hope.  If the – the _most_ _statistics-obsessed person_ I have _ever met_ could take a gamble like that on a mere hope, then so can we.”

Out of nothing, a faint smile twitches on Cassian’s lips.  “You called him a person.”

“He _was_ a person.”  Hells, yes.

“He would have liked that.”

She debates for a moment; but she has no right to keep anything Kay said private from Cassian.  “I hope he would have.  When I gave him that blaster, he told me my behaviour was continually unexpected.”

There’s a tiny pause and Cassian’s eyes become very bright before he suddenly smiles with all his strength.  “He told me that once, too, not long after we met.  I think it was his biggest compliment.”

“Nice to know some people appreciate the benefits of unpredictability.”

“He liked a challenge.”

“So do I.”


End file.
